Nubank

History

Nubank was founded in 2013 by David Vélez, Cristina Junqueira and Edward Wible. Its first product was a no-fee purple credit card managed entirely through an app, addressing frustration with Brazil's concentrated and high-fee banking sector. The company listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021.

Founders

David Vélez is co-founder and chief executive officer of Nubank (Nu Holdings), one of the world's largest digital banks by customers. A Colombian entrepreneur and former Sequoia Capital investor, Vélez moved to Brazil after seeing how concentrated, high-fee banking limited financial access across Latin America. In 2013 he co-founded Nubank in São Paulo around a no-fee purple credit card managed entirely by app—later expanding into NuConta accounts, lending and a multi-country financial ecosystem listed on the NYSE.

Cristina Junqueira is co-founder of Nubank and a long-time senior executive. A Brazilian engineer who previously worked at Itaú Unibanco, she helped design Nubank's consumer product and growth model for Brazil's mass market and has been a prominent public voice for Latin American fintech.

Edward Wible is co-founder and early chief technology officer. An American engineer, Wible led the technical architecture of Nubank's app and backend as the company scaled across Brazil, Mexico and Colombia.

Latin American expansion

From Brazil, Nubank expanded into Mexico and Colombia, exporting its purple-card brand and digital-account model. As Nu Holdings (NYSE: NU), it reports tens of millions of customers and is a reference case for emerging-market neobank scale.

Products

Nubank offers credit cards, the NuConta digital account, personal loans, investments, insurance and a rewards programme, expanding into a full financial ecosystem across Latin America.